DAVIS STRAIT AND LABRADOR SEA 



50 



105 



FiGUHB 69. — The Labrador Current on the surface the summer 

 expressed in miles per day in axis of current. 



of 1934. Velocities 



The table shows that the average surface velocity of the shelf band 

 of the Labrador Current, for the summers recorded, ranged from 7.6 

 to 4.1 miles per day. And for the slope band the velocity ranged 

 from 13.0 to 8.8 miles per day. The shelf band and the slope band, 

 therefore, for all of the years, average 5.4 and 11.1 miles per day, 

 or a final average of 8.2 miles per day for the Labrador Current as a 

 whole.^^ 



The above figures agree well with the general knowledge regarding 

 the drift of the icebergs from tlie dates of the breakup of the fast and 

 pack ice in Baffin Bay and along the Labrador coast to the appear- 

 ance of the ice south of Newfoundland. It is not difficult to trace 

 the spring crop of bergs which constitute the danger to the North 

 Atlantic steamship lanes. If not unduly hindered, they probably 

 spent the previous winter in the vicinity of Cape Dyer, Baffin Land, 

 and the second previous winter in Melville Bay and northern Baffin 

 Bay.^^ Their calving from the glacier the summer of that year checks 

 well with our scanty knowledge of the currents in the far north and 

 of the vicissitudes which the icebergs experience along their drifts. 



1" Iselin (1930) estimated the average surface velocity of the Labrador Current was 

 10 miles per day. 



11 The thousands of bergs observed by Bartlett (1935) off Devon Island, Aug. 20-25, 

 1934. probably wer" released from West Greenland ice-fiords the previous summer. The 

 International Ice Patrol reported a total of 872 icebergs south of Newfoundland the 

 season of 1935, a heavy ice year. 



